Reverse engineer it. Ask friends and family of all ages how would they find a Home Inspector. Then make sure you are marketing and making those people aware of your services.
About Thumbtack or Home Advisor or other similar service. I used both for my first 2 years. They frustrated me, but I got some jobs, and earned some reputation with realtors who now refer me. It was costly but it worked. All these services have upfront buy-in costs of $300-$500, without giving you any leads. Then you have to pay for leads that they send your way. Depending upon your area of country, that might cost you $15-$50 for each lead. Each service is a little different, but basically with Home Advisor they will just tell you that “a person (maybe they’ll give you their actual name) is looking for a home inspection, their contact info is XXX” and now you have to quick call them. With Home Advisor you have to get ahold of the client and sell yourself as they don’t have your info. However, Home Advisor gave that same client’s info to 3-6 other Home Inspectors, so if you aren’t the first caller, you probably won’t get the job. Or the caller is just wondering what the price will be, or how long it takes to book an inspector. Or they just won’t answer. I’ve called within seconds of getting notified only to find the line was already busy. Either way, you still got charged for that lead. Or with Thumbtack they tell you that they just gave your info (along with several other competitor’s info) to a client, and you must wait for the client to decide or you can contact the client to sell your services. You’ll hear people say they’ve been given (and charged for) up to 5 leads in one week, but they’ve never gotten through to the client or when they have gotten through the client already found someone or was just looking for info or was looking for an appraiser not an inspector. The clients don’t get charged for searching on Home Advisor or Thumbtack, only the businesses do, so clients do all kinds of free searches…and businesses end up having to pay for those searches. If you have time to immediately call, then those services might work for you. But if you are busy with another job, or in the middle of an inspection, you can’t always make that immediate call and usually will lose on that lead that you’ve just paid for.
Hope that helps. Good luck.
